The history of knife making begins with the dawn of mankind itself. The very earliest relics found in association with ancient man include edged weapons with which primitive man sought to defend himself, and use to provide food, clothing, and shelter for his family.
A knife sheathed on a belt or strap and prominently displayed on the wearer is appropriate for hunting and woodland hiking, where the knife may be used to mark a trail or to skin an animal which has been shot as a trophy or for food. The famous Bowie knife invented by Jim Bowie in the late 1820's is an example of such a knife. This knife was used by frontiersmen through much of the 19th and early 20th century. However, the wearing of a prominently displayed knife of this type may be frowned on in other circumstances and may also be considered in poor taste. Additionally, it exposes the weapon to a potential attacker well before the victim may realize that he is under attack and have an opportunity to bring the knife into defensive use.
While carrying a concealed defense knife may also be frowned upon in some circumstances, in view of the high crime rate in today's urban environment, it is proper for an individual to carry a concealed knife to be used in self defense and ward off an attacker. In recent history, concealment defense knives have been known in the prior art for many hundreds of years.
A common type of concealment defense knife which has been used was the sheath style dagger which was carried beneath the cloak or in the boot. In these types of knives, the blade was not capable of concealment by the handle, but instead had to be housed in a separate sheath. Conventional jack knives are also used for this purpose. These knives ordinarily have one or more blades pivoted at their proximal ends to one of the extreme ends of the jack knife housing that constitutes a handle.
The easiest knife to conceal and by far the most popular is the folder. To conceal and carry, it only needs to be slipped in the pocket, although some state laws may require it to be sheathed openly on the belt. The folder has been used as a hideout weapon at least since the early nineteenth century. Although folders have been around for centuries, it required certain advances in the art to make them suitable as weapons. The blade has to open easily and then lock in position. One early example was the rocker-locked folding dirk. At the turn of this century, the switchblade was identified as the archetypal folding knife.
A dramatic type of folding knife which is of great value as a defense weapon is a type of clasp knife wherein the handle of the knife is made in two sections and can swing around to completely conceal the blade within a channel in the handles. The original concept of such a knife can be traced to U.S. Pat. No. 124,566 issued to Thomas Garrick in 1872. A more direct disclosure of such a knife can be found in U.S. Pat. No. 229,706 on a "Clasp Knife" issued to E. Jansen in 1880. In that patent, the invention consists essentially in adapting the handle to be swung around upon the blade to bare the latter, instead of swinging the latter upon a pivot on the handle. The patent claimed a knife with a handle made in two sections, pivoted at one end to opposite sides of the knife blade and arranged to be rotated upon their pivots to bare or enclose the blade. Although the concept of the overall knife was disclosed, the handle members appear to be of thin and weak construction. An improvement in the handle section was made by G. W. Miller and disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 365,086 issued to him in 1887. In this invention, the handle is made of sheet metal folded up from a blank that was originally cut or stamped from a sheet of metal. The folded metal provided a handle with a central channel which concealed the knife blade. This handle was also of weak construction as the walls of the metal handle were necessarily thin in order to allow the metal to be folded at right angles to create the channel. A knife utilizing this concept but containing a handle with more substantial construction is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 881,294 issued to C. E. Billings in 1908. In this case, the handle consists of two metal tubes with a slot milled along one side of each tube for receiving the edge of the blade. Three other United States Letters Patent which disclose knives with a design of similar concept are Werner U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,659,418 issued in 1928, Gatewood 1,665,955 issued in 1928, and Clark 2,714,249 issued in 1925.
In more recent years, knives embodying this concept were made in the Batangas province of the Philippines during and after World War II. Known as a butterfly folding knife, it was made in jungle workshops from available materials, with metal, baffalo horn or plastic handles. They were constructed of available materials with hand tools in family shops. Therefore, each knife was an individual item which was not a duplicate of any other knife. As a result, there was very little quality control incorporated into the manufacture of these knives.
The construction of the handles of the butterfly folding knives described in the above referenced patents and those made in the Philippines are basically of thin and weak construction. Although useful for simple tasks such as cutting light objects, the inferior construction of the handles makes the above disclosed knives of questionable use as a defense knife. In a completely closed position with the blade fully concealed, the handles are too weak to be used effectively as a club or straight object. When using the knife with the blade in an opened position, the weaker handles can buckle on impact or the blade can easily be broken off at the point where it joins the handle if there is a hard impact.